


Stupid Sexy Farm Boy

by beautifultoastdream



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types
Genre: AU from the EU, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Married Life, Morning, Sweet, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28846134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: A newly married Mara Jade contemplates her husband, the nature of the Jedi, and whether it would bring someone closer to the Dark Side if they "accidentally" skip a boring meeting. Domestic fluff, AU from the EU. Repost from Tumblr.
Relationships: Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	Stupid Sexy Farm Boy

Mara Jade silently contemplated the Jedi in her bed. Asleep, some of the lines left by age and war smoothed themselves away, and Skywalker again resembled the farm boy he'd once been. The one he still was, in some parts of his mind.

When two Force-sensitives shared a bed, dreams could get strange. Mara had wandered—carefully, so carefully—in Skywalker's memories during their nights together, seeking answers she couldn't ordinarily get or didn't believe could be true. She shied instinctively from the subject of the Rebellion, even in dreams: she had made her peace with some of it, and the Emperor's voice now echoed only in distant recollections, but seeing what Skywalker had done during those tumultuous years made it too damned easy to think of what _she_ had done. Something as simple as a memory of a friendly drink in a tapcafe would leave her wondering where she had been on that same day, and she often found she didn't like the answer. 

It was easy to resent him, sometimes, for the ease with which his mere existence made her loathe  things  that had once done her proud.

Instead, Mara preferred to look further back.  A childhood on Tatooine,  the back end of the universe . Crawling through the depths of an extractor, looking futilely for one particular fault in the system that Uncle Owen insisted was there. Fishing broken shards of plasteel out of  a collecting array because, at five years old, his hands were small enough to slip between the  wire panels.  Perpetual thirst, and a dry throat so common that he stopped noticing  it.  And a few years later, the feeling of rightness as he discovered flight: screeching through the canyons in jury-rigged little speeders that barely even deserved the name, laughing and shouting with friends as they competed to push each other off their crudely lined-out race course,  frantically retying the filtered mask that had come loose mid-flight and now threatened to let him choke on dust and sand even before he ever crossed the finish line—

Mara had once mocked him about it. She had seen the wonders of the galaxy during her time as the Emperor's Hand, grand palaces and glorious mile-high cities and lush pleasure worlds and magnificent starships, and here he was holding onto memories of a shitty little corrupt spaceport. (She'd spent only a little time in Mos Eisley during her sojourn with Jabba's retinue, and she'd seen all she ever wanted of the place.) 

Skywalker, though, didn't seem to see it that way. “ It was the big city,” he'd said with a shrug. 

And that was it, wasn't it? He'd dreamed of going to a shitty little corrupt spaceport because he grew up on a shitty little farm squatting in the dust of a shitty little world, and somehow that had helped make him … make him _him._ Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi Master, who was somehow also still the farm boy that nearly crashed his speeder more times than he could count.

“I hate it when you do this,” she murmured, smoothing a lock of blond hair out of his eyes. He made a soft noise and shifted a little on the bed, leaning instinctively into her touch. Trusting, for a man in bed with the woman who'd once sworn to kill him. In the field he slept lightly, his senses wide open and alert for danger, but here his sleep was easy and calm. “Things used to be so much simpler.”

But then, they used to be so much harder, too. Even if she always made sure to fall asleep last, she still willingly shared a bed with her onetime enemy and target. She trusted him—trusted him to trust her, really.

No, he wasn't making this easy. But she didn't hate it.

Mara ran the edge of her thumb over the Jedi's jaw before rising and pulling on a long tunic, boots, and a comfortable robe. Their temporary quarters were in the newest rebuilt wing of the Imperial Palace, one thankfully without memories associated with it, and to her relief they were small and nearly windowless. She and Skywalker had agreed on that: after years of cramped quarters onboard ship or in various knocked-together hideouts, a suite of a dozen luxurious rooms felt not just unnecessary, but frankly unsettling. This suite had a bedroom, a living room, a workroom with a tiny attached kitchenette, a 'fresher, and precisely one window. All the necessities, none of the fuss.

The living room window was shaded transparisteel and, as usual, currently set to one-way visibility. The panels blocked the radiating warmth of Coruscant's sun, but Mara was used to that, and she still smiled into the light as she leaned on the sill. She could see out, but no one could see in, and the world went by unaware that she was watching and recording its every move. The traffic rushing by didn't know or care that she watched. Life went on.

A glance at the chronometer showed that it was an hour past dawn. And both the local Jedi Master and the former Emperor's Hand had a full schedule, too. Skywalker would be in meetings with representatives from half a dozen worlds, either managing negotiations over Force-sensitive candidates or helping his sister smooth ruffled feathers, and Mara had to talk to the smugglers' alliance _and_ the Republic historians.

A frank discussion with Karrde would probably do her good, even if it was just on a vidscreen, but the historians were going to be a headache. To them, someone who had had personal contact with the Emperor was like raw meat to a starving rancor.

In the years since she'd killed the clone and silenced her onetime master's voice, she had grown a little easier with her past. A little. But that bunch of egghead nerfbrains would want to know everything, and she wasn't prepared to tell them that much. She was planning on asking Karrde to call back in time to disrupt things. Urgent diplomatic business, so sorry, we'll have to reschedule.

(She'd learned just how to play that trick from Organa Solo. The woman was some kind of Jedi of bureaucracy.)

At that second, the world … shifted. No, that wasn't right. Mara opened her mind a little further. Her Force abilities were still unreliable sometimes, but a moment's concentration found the problem. Nothing had changed, except that Skywalker was awake.

A moment later, the bedroom door slid smoothly open. Skywalker emerged, yawning, still wearing only his loose sleeping trousers. Unlike Mara, he didn't seem worried about the possibility of being surprised half-dressed. He blinked, wiping sleep out of his eyes, and saw her standing by the window. A small smile crossed his face.

“Good morning,” he said. His voice was still sleep-roughened, and his hair was mussed. Mara's heart ached, just a little, at the sight. He looked so damned _right_ _._

“Morning.” She gestured to the chronometer. “It looks like you got up just in time to eat and run to your first meeting. Which is too bad, because I was planning to set that back a couple of hours and let you sleep in a while longer. Now you've caught me, and we both have to go be responsible.”

“The burden of being us,” Skywalker sighed. He wrapped an arm around her waist and planted a soft kiss on the side of her neck. “How about you set it back and pretend you never told me?”

“But that would be lying, and lying is wrong,” Mara said solemnly. “That way lies the Dark Side.” Despite the seriousness of her tone, she leaned back into his arms. A calm, steadying warmth was stealing over her, like the sun had finally found its way through the transparisteel.

No, she wasn't being ridiculous or sentimental. Human beings were warm, and Skywalker was human. That was it.

Skywalker smiled against her skin. “True. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to lateness … ”

He didn't get to finish his bastardized Jedi creed, because Mara snorted loudly. “Somewhere, that Yoda of yours is deeply disappointed in you,” she said. “You were supposed to be stoic and lifeless, like the Jedi of the Old Republic. And here you are, making jokes, with a woman.”

“If that's your way of saying you want me to leave—“

Her fingers wrapped around his wrist as he began to pull away. “Not on your life,” she said, and pulled him in for a real kiss.

Luke Skywalker kissed like a farm boy. Eager, hungry, energetic. Not much technique, not in the beginning, but Jedi learned unfairly fast and this Jedi was a better student than most. Mara let herself relax into him, her fingers tangling in the unruly blond hair, his hands hot on her back. _Yes, please._

“You're a bad influence on me,” she told him at last. Her head rested against his shoulder, her his breath ruffling her hair. She could feel his pulse racing against her cheek.

“That's strange. You're a good influence on me.”

She let out another laugh, this one tinged with bitterness. “You're still a lousy liar, Skywalker.”

“And you're still bad at judging my motivations. I meant it.” He twisted one strand of her hair around his finger, idly examining the way the sunlight played on the coppery strands. She could hear that small, half-crooked Skywalker smile in his voice. “I like having you here to scare me straight. If I was ever tempted by the Dark Side again, you'd knock me out and keep me down until I went back to behaving myself.”

“I like the sound of that.” Mara relaxed a little more, her eyes half-closing. The world around her was warm and bright and full of rightness, and if the comm decided to beep or Threepio interrupted she was going to break something with extreme prejudice. “Does that mean I can reset the chronometer now? Since I can keep you from losing your soul and all.”

She could feel Luke hesitate. Neither of them really wanted to attend those meetings. But he wouldn't be Luke Skywalker if he shirked his duty, so she waited patiently until he sighed.

“No,” he said reluctantly. “I need to be there. At this point, one delay could mean weeks of setback. And you might be able to keep me from turning to the Dark Side, but if I accidentally snub one of these diplomats and cause a political disaster, I'm fairly sure Leia will kill me.”

Mara grinned wryly. Of all the things to joke about … But her world had changed so much since she first returned to Coruscant, and it was with complete honesty (and only a little sarcasm) that she leaned into him and said “Well, we can't have _that.”_


End file.
